Thursday, April 20, 2017

We had intended stopping over for the night at Jekyll Island but as so often on our trip north, the weather was so inviting that we traveled on to Hidden Harbor YC north of Jekyll. We did stop at Jekyll for a lunch break and to let the tide fill in for the passage through the shallows of Jekyll Island.

They have a nice clubhouse as part of the condos

With a 3.5 ft tide, Jekyll was not a problem. In fact, I could have passed through at low tide. Last year I had seen the locals favor the eastern shore on their trips through during low tide and so I tried the same technique with good success. If you look at the chart of the passage, it makes two turns to the outside on the eastern shore. Your 101 course in ICW seamanship will tell you to take the outside of a turn for deeper water. The same is true on the Jekyll passage. I favored the green side edge of the passage and the least depth I found was 5.3 MLW (MLW is the depth at low tide). I posted full details on Active Captain today.

A relaxing place in the clubhouse

Once past Jekyll, we wanted to stay overnight at Hidden Harbor since it would give us a head start on getting through Mud River with about 2 ft of tide above the nominal 4.5 ft, not a lot but enough for our 4' 9" draft. This will require a "first daylight" start in the morning to reach the Mud River in time. That's not our favorite start to the morning but time and tide waits for no man as the saying goes.

The marina here is first rate as to service. You have a standing offer of a ride to the nearest store you need be it Walmart or Publix and the dock lady was eager to please. I saw 6.3 MLW over the bar at the entrance to the creek. I had thought it would be less. We're headed for Kilkenny Marina on Friday since that will put us in line to make the dreaded Hell Gate passage with a a 4 ft tide or better and since the low tide depth is only 3 ft, we'll need most of that boost.